Roy Williams and the Case of the Missing Coverage Skills
by Will Parchman
As I sit here in the dark of my study, I’m trying to figure something out. It’s something that has been bothering me since Parcells arrived on the scene and something so widely accepted that it immediately raises red flags:
Roy Williams can’t cover anybody. You know you’ve heard it - we all have. In fact, you may have said it at some point in an angered or frustrated state, most likely following some particularly heinous blown coverage or yet another big play yielded by our secondary. There’s an old addage that goes something like, “If enough people repeat something, it becomes truth.” There’s also another one that says there is always some truth to stereotypes or else they wouldn’t exist in the first place, but I think our opinion on Roy Williams should lie somewhere in the middle.
While taken slightly out of context, here are some quotes from a few Cowboys fans I know who have graciously provided me with ammo to begin our great debate.
“Let’s make him a linebacker, because the dude obviously cannot cover deep.”
“He can hit. Can’t tell you much else about him, but he can hit the white off Jerry Lee Lewis.”
“Don’t you pay attention to football? If I had a nickel everytime Roy looked completely lost this year I’d have about 85 cents.”
While relatively small in sample size, they prove my point. There is a general consensus that Roy Williams couldn’t cover Willie Roaf, and this popular perception simply isn’t true. The educated fans that follow Roy in his week-to-week dealings usually aren’t of this opinion, but if we were all educated there would be no purpose for writing of any sort. Allow me to submit for your approval some overall statistical rankings from the Cowboys’ defense of 2005.
QB Completion % allowed – 54.7% (2nd)
Yards per attempt allowed – 6.23 (15th)
TD’s allowed per Pass Attempt – 1 per 27.5 attempts (14th)
INT’s per pass attempt – 1 per 33.00 attempts (13th)
INT Per Pass Attempt minus TD per Pass Attempt (13th)
QB Rating Allowed – 73.11 (9th)
For a defense nursing it’s #2 corner back to health for the entire second half and without any kind of free safety, those do not reflect a secondary that has a deficiency at SS. Where the disconnect comes for some fans is around the fact that the Cowboys have literally set Roy Williams up to fail. In 2002-2004 he played as a FS, where he was clearly overmatched by the speed of the game but still made timely plays in an effort to conceal the weaknesses at almost every position around him. He was clearly not FS material in the NFL, but the Cowboys had no other options with Woody at SS… but they made do, because Williams has pheonomenal athletic ability (and pssst… here’s a hint - he still does… did you watch the Pro Bowl?). This past season he was moved to a more natural position for him and yet it was during the first season of a 3-4 experiment, a scheme which is highly reliant upon linebackers and safeties to make up the ground that extra defensive backs are not on the field to cover. It isn’t that Roy isn’t able to succeed in a 3-4, but the Cowboys had little (read: no) support at FS, which ultimately meant that Roy is the guy who tries to cover Killer Keith or Willie Pile’s clumsy tracks… he is, after all, the last in a long line of defenders. If you don’t believe that Roy was playing beside a complete defensive disaster in Davis, look at a failed Cover 2 assignment from the Killer himself against the Chiefs in Week 14.
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Now mind you, the Cowboys are clinging to a 24-21 lead at this point, there are five minutes remaining in the game and the FS is looking pass all the way. Larry Johnson was ripping the Cowboys up, sure, but there were wide gashes in the middle of the secondary not because of LJ but because Green had been pin-pointing his throws all day. Here we see the play developing that would ulitmately end in a TD to Kennison (the WR on the right side) because Davis blew his coverage. Samie Parker is the wide out on the far side and both he and Kennison are running 15-yard out-routes while vicious weapon Tony Gonzalez is running an inside seam route up the middle of the field.
This is a well designed play that likely would have netted the Chiefs a first down even if Davis had been doing his job, but unfortunately the result was much more severe then just a chain-mover. Where Davis errs is he misses the fact that Green had checked off Parker, partially because Roy had done a great job cheating to the outside corner before the play began (along with a shallow route by Parker coupled with great underneath coverage), forcing Green to look down the middle/to his right. Davis never recognizes this (and play recognition was the first thing I always harped on with Davis in the regular season). I circled Roy because after Green moved past Parker, he recognizes the shift and begins drifting towards the inside to help Fujita over the top with Gonzalez. Thinking he needed to do the same, Davis shadows Gonzalez’s other shoulder, not understanding what just took place, while Terence Newman - on the 40 - is drifting in front of Kennison (per the Cover 2 formula), expecting
somebody to have contain behind him. Newman’s coverage had to be closer to the line of scrimmage because he was responsible for the flat that Larry Johnson had created when he came out of the backfield as a receiver, creating a nice little pocket for Kennison. Unfortunately, Davis doesn’t read any of this before he makes his first move. Killer Keith’s coverage was technically correct (very, very technically). You are taught to take the over-top read if it is there and in your general proximity, which it was. The problem arises when Davis fails to realize the stellar, on-his-feet adjustment Roy had made and doesn’t adjust himself. Plus, no matter what the situation with Gonzalez, he never should have drifted that far over, and the result was this…
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Once again, Davis recognizes what happens, but well after the ball had left Trent Green’s hand, and he clearly doesn’t have the speed to catch up with Fast Eddie Kennison. He had simply left himself too much ground to cover and through his inaction wasn’t able to adjust. You’ve got three guys covering Tony Gonzalez and none on Kennison… what is wrong with this picture?
This is what Roy had to deal with for most of the ‘05 season. That is not to say, of course, that he didn’t blow his share of assignments. In fact, to show you that I’m not here to toot Roy’s horn, here is a piece I wrote about the safety play in the Week 16 Carolina game:
Roy Williams’ issue was similar, only his failure to react caused six points instead of three. Aaron Glenn had coverage on functional 6'3 rookie Drew Carter, who was running a post/skinny slant route towards the middle of the field. Williams, much like Davis before him, froze and went nowhere for approximately three seconds, giving Glenn, who was clearly expecting Williams’ help to the inside, no chance against the perfectly thrown rope to Carter. This seems to be a recurring theme with our safeties. They don’t read coverages/schemes quickly enough and the play develops at a higher speed than they can handle… this means that they’re usually a second or two late to the play, which can mean the difference between an interception and a touchdown.
As you can see, I have acknowledged Roy’s coverage skills or lack thereof in the past, but there is a general popular misconception about how bad it truly is. Scouts Inc. has Roy rated as a 90 overall, the best overall ranking for any safety in the entire league, and you don’t get that by being the worst coverage safety around. He has the lateral quickness and top speed to keep up with any tight end in the league (save
maybe Gates), and barring some kind of inconceivable calamity at FS this off-season, he should also have a complimentary color alongside him next season. This means that he might actually have someone who has the ability to read plays on the fly half as well as he can, which makes for a pretty scary tandem to pair with the already-scary Newman-Henry combo.
